I first met Al Ellis in 1954, and maintained a friendly relationship with him through the years, He was briefly a supervisor in the early stages of my private practice. Al broke all the then/day rules of therapist contact, including recording sessions without telling the patient (Al said that it would inhibit the patient) and “setting an agenda.” His first entry into the field was as a Karen Horney psychoanalyst. If you knew him, he had a manner incompatible with “analytic neutrality,” but harmonious with that of a concerned crony. Al’s approach issued from his own personal history. The classic New York nerd, Al was early engrossed in stale secondhand bookstores. He was admittedly a bit of a writing hack, but with solid expectations that he had important things to say. He wrote as some people speed eat. I recall his talk about buying a used electric typewriter to keep up with his rapid succession of articles and books. Al said, you just have to plough ahead even if you are no Faulkner. He remained steadfast in moving his agenda forward, even as some said that he kept writing the same book with profusion of hit titles. My favorites: “How to Live With a Neurotic,” and “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Manhunting.”

Al’s system of therapy could seem harsh. And only that if you failed to look at the man who never aimed to be a wizard, but more the caring fellow traveler. Most certainly this makes him all that any humanist could hope to aim for. Al never forgot his “neurotic” roots. They were the essentials which gave him the right to truly relate to the population he aimed to be one with. He was high theatre/low theatre. He could make others laugh, and if you’d carefully look at his facial expressions, you’d often think that the joke was (by his self-design) on him.

Al was a devoted being. He served on two of my editorial boards - VOICES: The Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists and The Psychotherapy Patient. He was never not responsive to my call for a last minute review; to my asking him for an article; to being there with no small amount of wise advice. Al seemed to be intolerant to many of the psychotherapy royalty. He dubbed most of them “crazy,” but when the time came, Al could comfortably spar with the likes of Carl Rogers. Rollo May and Fritz Perls.

I will miss the reassurance that Al Ellis (a longest lived colleague) is no more. And in the wake of his passing, I crystallize (in the backbone of my mind), a ditty that dates back to my first grade memorization (source unknown), but in the finest sense, embodies his now ended mission:

Ah well, thought he, one thing I’ve learned,
Nor shall I soon forget;
Whatever frightens me again,
I’ll march straight up to it.